Genes need good teachers to produce reading skills

Various studies have indicated that both genes and teachers can influence a …

The nature vs. nurture debate began long before we even understood inheritance in any significant way, and has continued through the discovery of genes and up to the present era of molecular genetics. But understanding how the nature side of things operates hasn't done much to settle matters, as the ability to control for the variable influence of nature—or raise humans in a controlled environment—has made isolating specific influences challenging. Still, the picture that's emerging is one of a complex interplay between genetic potential and environmental factors, which is nicely highlighted by a paper in this week's Science.

The paper looks at the links among genetics, environment, and reading ability. The portion of the paper that reviews the current literature provides a great indication of why matters can get confusing. Various studies have indicated that a large portion of children's reading skills can be ascribed to genetic influences—typical twin studies indicate that genes account for about 65 percent of the variability. Yet studies of general classroom performance in unrelated students indicate that individual teachers and the classroom environment they create can have a strong influence on the development of reading ability. It would be very tempting to look at the apparently conflicting results and ask, "Well, which is it?"

The new study suggests that it's a bit of both. Genes provide a potential capacity for developing reading skills, but it takes a good teacher to actually push students to their limits.

The work takes advantage of a research program called the Florida Twin Project on Reading, which has enrolled 280 pairs of monozygotic (identical) twins pairs, and another 526 dizygotics (fraternal). In the first and second grades, the twins, along with their classmates, had their reading skill assessed using the Oral Reading Fluency test. The scores of their classmates provided a baseline for the expected achievements of the twins.

As you'd expect from past results, genetics played a big role, accounting for nearly half of the influence on the reading scores. Shared environmental influences accounted for 37 percent, while non-shared environment another 16 percent.

But the researchers were also able to show that there's a strong impact of teacher quality (as measured by the performance of the twins' classmates). As the quality of the teacher improves, the correlation between environmental influences and test scores remains constant. But the impact of genetics more than doubles across the range of teacher quality measured here, which covers four standard deviations of test scores.

The authors sum up the results by concluding, "When teacher quality is very low, genetic variance is constricted, whereas, when teacher quality is very high, genetic variance blooms." Another way to view this is that, in bad classrooms, nobody has the opportunity to reach their full potential, while in good classrooms, students get pushed to the upper limits of their potential. This goes a long way towards explaining the seemingly contradictory results in the literature; in a sense, everybody was right.

As the authors note, however, a lot goes on in a classroom that influences learning, and their generic "teacher quality" score may cover a lot of influences, including some that are completely out of the hands of the teachers. In addition, reading skills continue to develop as children advance through school, so a snapshot at this level (when the children are about six to eight years old, will only tell part of the story. At later stages of schooling, the quality of current teachers may interact not only with genetics, but with the quality of earlier classrooms, as well.

Oh here we go. Look folks, a study that confirms what you think you know is not automatically a waste of money, especially in an area as important and occasionally politically contentious as education. The only poor study in that environment would be one with poor experimental design or statistical control.

Oh here we go. Look folks, a study that confirms what you think you know is not automatically a waste of money, especially in an area as important and occasionally politically contentious as education. The only poor study in that environment would be one with poor experimental design or statistical control.

This study wouldn't be a waste of money if it included achievable suggestions for raising the education level.

ie: Specific on what constitutes a good, or bad environment to learn in. And to get that criteria applied to school as a minimum. Otherwise, YES, the study was a waste of money.

The ability to hit stupid people over the head with the study and say "See, we need to invest in teaching" has some value, but the money spent on the study spent on teaching instead also has value.

Oh here we go. Look folks, a study that confirms what you think you know is not automatically a waste of money, especially in an area as important and occasionally politically contentious as education. The only poor study in that environment would be one with poor experimental design or statistical control.

This study wouldn't be a waste of money if it included achievable suggestions for raising the education level.

ie: Specific on what constitutes a good, or bad environment to learn in. And to get that criteria applied to school as a minimum. Otherwise, YES, the study was a waste of money.

We already have concrete information about what makes good and bad learning environments, and pretty good information about what methods of teaching are best. This study certainly wasn't needed to contribute to that body of information.

Of course, I strongly suspect that this study wasn't intended to contribute to that body of information. IMO it's a pretty interesting result which provides useful context for making sense of already-present information. Of course, the first three comments ignored the real results of the study to make snarky comments about obviousness, so I suspect that this discussion will be overwhelmed by similar cheap shots, but there is interesting stuff in there, so far as I can tell.

Oh here we go. Look folks, a study that confirms what you think you know is not automatically a waste of money, especially in an area as important and occasionally politically contentious as education. The only poor study in that environment would be one with poor experimental design or statistical control.

This study wouldn't be a waste of money if it included achievable suggestions for raising the education level.

ie: Specific on what constitutes a good, or bad environment to learn in. And to get that criteria applied to school as a minimum. Otherwise, YES, the study was a waste of money.

The ability to hit stupid people over the head with the study and say "See, we need to invest in teaching" has some value, but the money spent on the study spent on teaching instead also has value.

Nobody cares about school funding, or quality of teachers.

People in general care about school funding. The problem is once the money comes out of our pocket as taxes, we have no say in how it's spent. The government decides to spend money on weird projects rather than school funding. The federal gov in general is focused on "teaching to test" rather than "teaching to learn". School districts and schools themselves decide to pop their money on better football equipment and stadiums rather than better teachers, better text-books, etc.

I do like this study, because you could also use it to reverse hypothesize; maybe some kids are limited in what they can learn by their genetics? Maybe you're wasting your time cramming more algebra and chemistry down some kids throats; maybe they're just genetically not able to "get it" very well, and it's a waste of time & money teaching it to them when a) they don't have interest, b) they're not going to pursue it later.

But, going to that extent would also be a huge jump. I personally would not like someone telling me it's a waste of time trying to teach me XYZ because my genetics deem me incapable of learning it well or past a certain level of complexity.

EDIT: I should also add that how you teach someone has a huge impact. Not sure if they took that into account, but you can teach both left & right-brained folks art & math, you just have to teach it in a way that both types can comprehend. Right-brainers are not inherently inclined to math and programming, but if they can use it to do music or art or create some game, they'll be interested enough in learning the tools. A motivated goal is always a good carrot to learn new tools. I think that was a huge problem in school. They teach you all this stuff, but they don't give you any real-world reason why you'd need it. Especially in algebra class. It wasn't until I got into the real world and got into programming that I realized algebra was immensely useful. Until then, it was just space wasting away in my brain.

This study is a nice follow-up on earlier studies about the role of environment on general cognitive development. The findings appear essentially the same (environment tends to depress ability below potential). Extending this to reading isn't exactly a given, though, as reading is not a "natural" process (meaning kids don't just pick up literacy like they do spoken language). To that end the study is informative. It also helps highlight the importance of good teacher education (teaching teachers to teach).

A quick note about "teaching to the test", it's easy to suggest that it's a bad idea, but if the test is a good test (meaning it embodies knowledge considered essential), then it's not really a bad thing, is it? I think most people suggest "teaching to the test" is bad because it skews the results of standardized testing and prevents us from getting an accurate picture (inasmuch as the test itself is valid).

Well, it's not like I expected people to begin reading without some sort of teaching. This all just seems rather obvious.

No it is not. Why should it be obvious that variations in reading skills in a class with a poor teachers correlates poorly with genes while it correlates highly in classes with good teachers?

I think most people should assume that there is a linear relationship, so that genes matter equal for outcome at every level for teacher quality.

This correlates btw strongly with other studies which show that among the middle class there is a a 70-80% correlation variations in IQ. While in the lower class it is only 20-30%. I think to most people that would immediately sound strange.

The government decides to spend money on weird projects rather than school funding. The federal gov in general is focused on "teaching to test" rather than "teaching to learn".

I'm with you on most of your post, but this is not true. Tests are just a way of measuring and they're necessary--measurement is absolutely fundamental to closed loop feedback improvement. It is also true that a good test will also teach you something in the process. There's nothing in standardized tests that makes a teacher "teach to test". In fact, I would venture to say that almost all of these tests are at a level of sophistication that any reasonably educated person (at the level being tested) should be able to pass without much trouble. If your child's teacher complains that because of standardized testing they need to now "teach to the test" then that is an admission that they are poor teachers and really don't care about "teaching to learn"; they should be fired. The fault is not with the test (or the federal government), but the teacher.

I will admit that one could argue whether the tests are good tests, but that is quite a different matter than arguing that standardized tests are bad, they force teachers into particular teaching strategies, or that they shouldn't be used to make changes to the educational system. Really, the reason why teacher's unions oppose these tests is because they don't like to be held accountable--nice work if you can get it, I suppose.

No it is not. Why should it be obvious that variations in reading skills in a class with a poor teachers correlates poorly with genes while it correlates highly in classes with good teachers?

I'd like to elaborate on this a bit. Given the indications that both genetics and teacher quality have strong influences on reading success, could you a priori eliminate an alternative hypothesis — that those predisposed by genetic to perform well could overcome even a bad teacher and succeed, while a good teacher gets everyone to perform at an equivalent level, regardless of their heritable predisposition? I don't think you can.

So, i think there's valuable information here even beyond sorting out the apparently inconsistent messages from studies of genetics and classroom quality.

Snarkyblonde wrote:

Can anyone explain to me how they eliminated pre-school parental influence on the results?Or, which method was used to differentiate between genetic potential and pre-school/childhood upbringing?

I think that's the identical/fraternal difference. The two children share different numbers of genes on average, but should have reasonably similar preschool environments, provided they were raised together.

Well, it's not like I expected people to begin reading without some sort of teaching.

Actually, you'd be surprised.

My wife is/was a teacher (she's now a full-time Mum), and she has friends that still teach in Kindergarten and the lower grades. They all reckon some kids do manage to put it all together at a very early age and start reading more or less by themselves.

They have always been adamant that this does happen, but I used to scoff at the notion. That attitude died when our three and a half year-old daughter started reading for herself a few months ago.

We didn't drill anything into her. We didn't sit down on any sort of schedule and go through how to sound out words. She cottoned on to the fact that words have meaning over a year ago, picked up the alphabet really quickly and then engaged on a campaign of "what does that say?" about a thousand times a day (that's probably not much of an exaggeration, either). She started memorising a bunch of words (not to mention all her books), and then moved on to being able to split them up and figure out what new ones say a few months ago. She now reads to her little brother at times, and is at the point where she'll add inflection and the likes to liven things up at the appropriate times.

Like I said, we didn't have any sort of regimen or anything, and hadn't intended to force her to read - she'll learn at her own pace, whatever that pace will be. No phonics crap, none of that "your baby can read" nonsense. We read a lot to her, which she's loved since she was a baby. She has the world's supply of books, way more than she needs, but it's not necessarily a bad way to be spoiled, I guess. She has one of those Leapfrog Tag pens that a lot of people have derided, which she fell in love with at a friend's house before Christmas, and Santa was good to her this past year.

Where this all came from is a complete mystery to us. Neither my wife nor I feel like we really taught her any of this, and I have no idea how she managed to figure it out.

I think you can take it as a given that all human skills depend on learning. If a child grows up in an environment that discourages that learning, it is likely to have an impact. It is also likely that genes affect the rate at which children mature and quite possibly also the degree to which they are influenced by their environment. It is at least necessary to consider the possibility that some children are more dependent on the quality of teaching than others. But the way humans learn any skill is by doing it. The way to help students improve their reading is likely to be by finding ways to encourage them to do more of it.

That attitude died when our three and a half year-old daughter started reading for herself a few months ago.

We didn't drill anything into her. We didn't sit down on any sort of schedule and go through how to sound out words. She cottoned on to the fact that words have meaning over a year ago, picked up the alphabet really quickly and then engaged on a campaign of "what does that say?" about a thousand times a day

What feedback did she get when she asked?

edit: and might that be related to the feedback she got before she reached that point?

That attitude died when our three and a half year-old daughter started reading for herself a few months ago.

We didn't drill anything into her. We didn't sit down on any sort of schedule and go through how to sound out words. She cottoned on to the fact that words have meaning over a year ago, picked up the alphabet really quickly and then engaged on a campaign of "what does that say?" about a thousand times a day

What feedback did she get when she asked?

edit: and might that be related to the feedback she got before she reached that point?

Yeah, I remember a study a while back about how the amount of communication and feedback kids get from their parents at a young age correlates well to later success in school.

In other words, when your kid asks "why is the sky blue and the grass green?" or "what does that say?" a thousand times a day, answer each and every one of those thousand questions, with enthusiasm. (If you don't know the answers, there's always the library and Google). Might as well give your kids all the advantages in life you can offer them.

In other words, when your kid asks "why is the sky blue and the grass green?" ... a thousand times a day, answer each and every one of those thousand questions, with enthusiasm.

Because god gave them that color ;-)

No seriously, I believe it's absolutely true what you write there. Young kids have so many questions as they have yet so much to explore that seems evident to us. And the younger they are the more easily they absorb information. Answering their many questions with real answers instead of oversimplified ones or "because that's the way it it" will help them grow up. Some parents might prefer to get around it because it takes less energy, but hey remember, it's payback time from when you were a kid ;-)

No it is not. Why should it be obvious that variations in reading skills in a class with a poor teachers correlates poorly with genes while it correlates highly in classes with good teachers?

I'd like to elaborate on this a bit. Given the indications that both genetics and teacher quality have strong influences on reading success, could you a priori eliminate an alternative hypothesis — that those predisposed by genetic to perform well could overcome even a bad teacher and succeed, while a good teacher gets everyone to perform at an equivalent level, regardless of their heritable predisposition? I don't think you can.

So, i think there's valuable information here even beyond sorting out the apparently inconsistent messages from studies of genetics and classroom quality.

I does not sound really contradictory to me that those with 'better' genes perform better with better teachers but they don't seem to perform better with poor teachers. It seems somehow like a model where it takes a lot of energy/effort to do the initial steps and reach a certain basic level where it becomes comfortable enough to make an easier progress.I imagine that with poor teaching, kids are not really motivated/interested into investing the effort to take those first hurdles and rather dont like it very much to learn to read. Learning stuff always goes best when it's in your own benefit: could be a direct benefit, a long term skill development, could be fun/interesting, ... Young kids have no direct benefit [* actually they do] learning to read. For them 'long term skill development' is a non-motivator as they have so much other things to learn that gives them direct benefits and only so few time to spend at everyting. So it comes rather down to quality teachers to make it as interesting and as high-quality to ease kids taking their first reading steps. They are like the oxygen needed to make a fire burn.

That does not exclude that if you have really good genes [and maybe some other environmental factors] that you could not overcome the initial barrier on your own. After all, there are kids who manage to do that at preschool level. It's just that with poor teachers there's no intrest in developing the skill even if you have good preconditions. After all, it takes more than just a talent at something to succeed with it.

[*] When I learned to read at the age of 5, my mom could no longer deny the broadcasting of some childrens TV shows. Look mom, here in the paper it says it's 'sesame street'. Definitely a direct benefit learning to read :-)

Yeah, I remember a study a while back about how the amount of communication and feedback kids get from their parents at a young age correlates well to later success in school.

In other words, when your kid asks "why is the sky blue and the grass green?" or "what does that say?" a thousand times a day, answer each and every one of those thousand questions, with enthusiasm. (If you don't know the answers, there's always the library and Google). Might as well give your kids all the advantages in life you can offer them.

Yeah, there was a longitudinal study by Hart and Risley (1995) that examined the impact that differences in parental communication had on a child's ability to later read (which impacts other academic areas too). Basically low levels of communication between the child and parent early in life result in a somewhat impoverished vocabulary, which stunts reading development. On the other hand, parents that communicate frequently and with a large diversity of words give their child an edge when it comes to reading. In other words, talk with your kids frequently and about a large variety of things if you want them to do well.

I know from my own kids experience (as well as my own when small) that having someone there to answer the questions (and not just brush then off, ignore, or deride) is a critical factor. We had at least 2 eneclopedias at home when I was a kid and lots of books. We had 3 or 4 differing age-relevant ones for our kids (this is all before Encarta and stuff like that); as well as multiple dictionaries, general reading and other reference (birds, insects, minerals...you name it).

To this day, they kids have their noses in a book and generally do well in school (not that failure is an acceptable model).

It is first and foremost the parent's responsiblity to help their kids learn. If you don't want to raise your kids, don't have them.

If your child's teacher complains that because of standardized testing they need to now "teach to the test" then that is an admission that they are poor teachers and really don't care about "teaching to learn"; they should be fired. The fault is not with the test (or the federal government), but the teacher.

I will admit that one could argue whether the tests are good tests, but that is quite a different matter than arguing that standardized tests are bad, they force teachers into particular teaching strategies, or that they shouldn't be used to make changes to the educational system. Really, the reason why teacher's unions oppose these tests is because they don't like to be held accountable--nice work if you can get it, I suppose.

Have you seen what's on some of these tests? I'm a high school teacher, and I strongly advise everyone who has a stake in this, and that is all of us, to scrutinize those tests a little more closely. The process and methodology of generating those tests is far from transparent.

Also, when I lament about "teaching to the test," what I'm really concerned with is the fact that the testing regime does not allow for genetic/personal variability in holding schools accountable. I acknowledge that schools are full of crappy teachers, but instead of finding other ways to address that, we've instead embarked on a policy of teaching every pig to sing and threatened teachers with sanctions if they fail.

Before you make bold proclamations about a teacher being a bad teacher, spend a significant amount of time in a classroom. That means more than just a day or two. Stick around past the honeymoon period with a full class load and witness the challenges. Everyone thinks they can be a teacher because they've seen a lot of teachers in their lifetime. But that's like assuming you can design and build a bridge because you've driven across a lot of bridges. The challenge of teaching well is somewhat analogous to user interface design, where what seems like such a simple design task quickly becomes a tangled mass of seemingly competing priorities, and when the final product is released, it always fails to meet someone's unforeseen needs. Like the designers of good software, we are struggling to make the useful functions of our subject areas accessible to our user base, and that is not easy. Teaching is just as maddeningly complex as everything else in this world of confounding variability, don't make assumptions without immediate experience actually doing the job.

That being said, I am very, very interested in exactly what teaching traits made the difference. I will look for the full text of the study and see if I can incorporate any of its insights into my own pedagogy.